


35mm Memories

by archionblu



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: 1990s, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Episode Related, First Kiss, GMM # 98: Embarrassing Teen Photos, High School, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Photography, Pining, highschool rhink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21936661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archionblu/pseuds/archionblu
Summary: It was true that when they were sixteen, Rhett and Link thought it’d be great to do an art shoot with a bright yellow plastic flower and the remaining photos on one of Link’s disposable cameras.What they hadn’t revealed to the Beasts, and what Link refused to even acknowledge, was that there was a second roll of film.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 7
Kudos: 61
Collections: Mythical Secret Santa 2019





	35mm Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NectarineMigraine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NectarineMigraine/gifts).



> Thank you to my giftee Jody for giving me a chance to try something new, my dearest [whotookmyusernameidea](https://whotookmyusernameidea.tumblr.com/) for being my cheerleader, to [Ren & Sims](https://mythicalsecretsanta.tumblr.com/) for organizing everything, and an EXTRA thank you to [Ren](https://loudspeakr.tumblr.com/) for betaing and saving all of you from my tenses crimes. All remaining mistakes are my own.

He doesn’t know why he still has the stupid thing, really.

Rhett’s had so many opportunities to throw it out: every time he’s moved, every time he’s gone digging through mementos to find something specific, whenever he’d gotten in one of those Link-like moods where he just had to get his clean on. 

He has a ritual with it now. Whenever he found it, he’d pick it up, run his thumb along the underside of the worn edge of the cap, unseating it slightly. Then he’d slide his index finger over the top of the grey plastic, the ridges of his fingerprints catching on the tiny dot of imperfect plastic hidden in the center divot as he pushes it back down, sealing it again without ever actually opening it. He thinks about how he should really toss this, but he always comes up with an excuse not to. 

Aren’t you supposed to recycle these things nowadays? Not that he knows how to do that, it probably has to go to some special facility. It’s not like it’s taking up that much room anyway. He’s held onto it for so long, it feels almost sacrilegious to toss it out. _He’s not ready to let go._

This time, he rolls it around in his palm a little, musing about how something so tiny can feel so big. This single canister of 35mm film holds some of his happiest memories...and one of his greatest regrets. How can this thumb-sized lump of plastic -- ‘cause that’s what film was made of, he’d looked it up once -- contain such a multitude?

He snorts a little at how cheesy that sounds, even in his head, closing his fingers around it. He goes to stick it in his pocket but then has the paranoid thought: _could his body heat somehow damage the film inside?_ So he keeps it in his hand, even though his sweaty-ass hands are probably warmer than his pocket anyway. He’s keeping it in his hand instead of putting it back because, after twenty-six years of sitting in that canister, he’s finally going to try and develop the film inside. He’d even found a place that still did that and everything. 

See, it was true that when they were sixteen, he and Link thought it’d be great to do an art shoot with a bright yellow plastic flower and the remaining photos on one of Link’s disposable cameras. They’d already shown those pictures to the Beasts, way back in season one of their show, before they’d even broken a hundred episodes. 

They’d made a big joke out of it, spent an entire ten freaking minutes cringing over their sixteen-year-old selves' attempt at art. They had made a particularly big deal out of two shirtless photos, ‘no homo’ing so hard he was surprised looking back that they hadn’t felt the need to bring up their marriages. To women. Two separate women. 

What they hadn’t revealed to the Beasts, and what Link refused to even acknowledge, was that there was a second roll of film.

The one clutched in Rhett’s hand right now. 

It makes steering a little awkward, but he's unwilling to let it go as he drives himself to the CVS -- not the one closest to his house or the studio, but one a little farther away from both. A CVS he doesn't frequent. There's always a risk of him being recognized in LA, but he could at least make sure that it was more likely to be a stranger who wouldn’t ask questions about why he was getting decades-old film developed.

The thing was that when they had gotten to the end of Link’s camera, they’d been on a _roll_ (hah.), still brimming with ideas for the perfect artistic shot. So they’d gone back to Rhett’s house and gotten his mom’s camera, spent actual money to buy a roll of film, and kept going. But the photos ended up not being the kind you could laugh at and make a mocking over-dramatized slideshow out of.

A car behind him honks and Rhett shakes himself free of Buies Creek,1994, to focus on L.A., 2019 traffic. He can get lost down memory lane when he’s back home, with the developed photos in hand.

  
  
  


\---

Rhett’s usually a pretty steady man, but his hands shake a little as he carefully unsticks the temporary adhesive of the envelope that holds his developed photographs. He’s scared, he can admit that. Real, physical evidence makes it real, makes it into something that actually happened that he can’t sweep back under the rug or ignore anymore.

The first few photos in the stack aren’t that incriminating. They’re shirtless, yes, but the scenes aren’t any worse than the two from Link’s disposable camera. Rhett, standing in the spot they’d found those dirty magazines, the flower laying flat in his hand. Link, holding the flower in his teeth, looking broodily off into the distance. 

They’d had a lot of botched, blurry shots as well, obviously unfamiliar with the more complicated settings on his mom’s fancy camera compared to the simple point-and-shoots that seemed to spawn in Link’s house. There’s about ten shitty photographs of them just attempting to get a shot of Rhett on his bicycle, riding down the empty road, flower tucked in his back pocket.

Every single one of them is too blurry for anyone who hadn’t been there when they were taken to be able to discern what they were supposed to depict. They’d tried to do it with Link following behind Rhett on his own bike, but Link had never been the most coordinated of people, and they’d been worried about breaking Diane’s camera. They never did get the clear shot they wanted of that. 

The photographs that follow those are the ones that make his heart squeeze painfully in his chest. These are the photos he doesn’t dare show his _wife_ , let alone the public. 

Link, standing in the river, the waistband of his underwear just visible above the waterline, slung low on his hips. They’d discovered that the plastic flower could float, so they’d left Link’s jeans on the shore and set up the shot with Link reaching out towards but not quite able to reach the bright yellow petals on top of the water. How Link had managed to convey so much _yearning_ despite not looking at the camera, Rhett still doesn’t know. He’d have thought that level of acting to be beyond sixteen-year-old Link. You couldn’t even tell that he'd complained for a whole ten minutes before that about how freaking cold the water was.

Rhett knows what’s coming next, and he almost doesn’t want to continue, thinks about stuffing the rest of the stack back in its little envelope and being done with this. But he’s come this far and he feels like he _has_ to finish this, so he shuffles the top photo to the bottom of the stack revealing the next image. 

There was no denying the intimacy of this pair of photos, or the implications behind the poses they’d chosen. He can’t remember what their teenage selves had been thinking, if they had still been striving to create art or if they’d moved on to just being silly. As Rhett stares down into Link’s earnest blue eyes, looking right at the camera, it doesn’t feel silly. 

It feels very, very real, to see Link in wet boxers and his sneakers, down on one knee, holding the flower up to the camera like an offering. As real as the sense memory that overtakes Rhett with the next photo, the sensation of cloth petals brushing against his nose and cheeks as he holds the flower to his face, as if taking in the aroma of the gift the Link of the previous shot had given him. His eyes are closed in the picture, and unlike the photos before this, there’s a smile on his face, turning up the corners of his mouth. 

The next photo is blurry, but that doesn’t stop it from being the most arresting photograph so far. Rhett had tucked the flower behind his ear and had been trying to arrange an artsy three-quarter angle shot of his face, and just as the shutter was clicking open and closed, there had suddenly been lips pressing against his own. Link had ended up a blurry streak in the photo, but the memory of that moment is still very clear to Rhett. 

When he’d felt those lips against his, he’d taken a sharp breath in through his nose and almost stepped back, startled, but Link’s hands had found their way to his shoulders and kept him in place. Rhett's hands had moved almost against his will, curling around the warm skin of his best friend’s waist and coming to rest on his hip and the small of his back, the camera hanging forgotten by its strap on his wrist. Link’s lips had been slightly dry, and Rhett had licked his own lips without thinking about it, causing Link to gasp and open his mouth, inviting Rhett’s tongue inside. 

Rhett had french-kissed girls before, but it’d been so unlike all those times that it might as well have been the first time. Even now, staring at the photo in his hands, Rhett feels the echo of what had felt like grabbing an electrified cow fence, when his tongue and Link’s had met in the middle, shy and exploring. 

He wishes he could remember what Link tasted like. 

\---

It was clear that a lot of time had passed between that blurry photo and the next one, as it was almost too dark to show up, grainy and grey. This was the last photo on the roll – he knows without even checking the rest of the stack, because he’d taken it on their way back home, twilight falling around them. 

It was an action shot, spur-of-the-moment rather than carefully posed like most of the others had been. Link, waist deep in the river again, his clothes and shoes bundled up in his arms as they waded back to the other side. The flower, somehow still obnoxiously bright in the fading light, was tucked behind his ear like an afterthought. 

The photograph did a really lackluster job of capturing the smile on Link’s face, at least compared to Rhett’s memory of it. It had been so wide it had practically split his face, and it’d shone brighter than the fading sun, or the stupid flower behind his ear. The joy and laughter lit up his whole face when he’d looked back at Rhett over his shoulder, the secret of what happened during those unrecorded hours caught in the crinkles around his eyes, present even at that age after years of laughing together. 

  
  


Rhett doesn’t remember where they’d been, what they were wearing, anything specific about the setting of the next memory, but it honestly didn’t matter. All that really matters is the way the words rang in his ears as if Link had screamed them rather than muttering them quietly whilst not looking at him. 

It had probably been a few days after they’d done that photo shoot, and he knows for sure that he’d asked Link when he wanted to go get their film developed. He doesn’t remember actually asking, but he knows he did, because he’s pretty sure that Link wouldn’t have even acknowledged it if he hadn’t brought it up. But because he had, Link had forced out a gruff “Don’t bother.”

“What?”

“You should throw it out. The roll from your mom’s camera.”

“Why? I spent like a whole four dollars on--”

“Because it was stupid. Those photos were stupid, they ain’t worth developing. It’d be a waste of money.”

"Oh." Rhett had paused, trying to swallow around the sudden knot in his throat. “...Okay.”

He still remembers how small his voice had been, when he’d agreed after that painful silence, trying to catch Link’s eyes even though his friend refused to look at him. He remembers it feeling like someone sticking a pin in a balloon inside his chest, all the joy trapped there leaking out until all that was left was limp latex. He doesn’t remember if he cried later that night, but he knows he’d definitely wanted to, back then.

Because one of the best days of _his_ life up to that point was apparently not worth the five dollars it’d take to remember it. Not to Link. And the implication was that if it didn’t matter to Link, well, it shouldn’t matter to Rhett, either. 

Whether or not he’d let those tears fall back in 1994, they’re flowing freely now, and he puts the stack of photos carefully to the side, not wanting to ruin them by accidentally crying on them. Despite it being nearly thirty years ago, he still remembers how much it hurt. He wonders if Link knew at the time just how badly he’d hurt Rhett. If Link remembered how quickly Rhett had gone out and got a girlfriend after that; needing an excuse to not spend time with Link for a while, needing someone to remind him of what he was _supposed_ to want. 

Like all things, the hurt and the memories had faded with time. But he hadn’t thrown the roll out. He’d shoved it into the backs of junk drawers, closets, and cardboard boxes, but he’d never been able to toss it away, disown it the way Link obviously had. It followed him from place to place for twenty-six years, until Rhett had found the courage to face it head on. 

Vision still a bit blurry, Rhett takes his phone out of his pocket and types up a quick message.

“Hey, can we talk?”

He sits and waits, watching the ellipses that appear a few minutes later as Link types his reply.

Because Link had been wrong. It _had_ been worth it. Those memories were absolutely worth keeping, and whatever it meant for them afterward, Rhett needed Link to know that.

It had been worth _everything_.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact I learned while writing this, drug stores don’t do one-hour-photo anymore. They ship them out to a third party company, it takes 3-5 days, and they don’t give you back your negatives or printed photos, just a CD with the pictures on it. That’s terrible and not at all poetic, so I took a few artistic liberties. 
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed! Don’t forget to like, comment ~~& subscribe~~! ;)


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